@Cosmik
The existence and effectiveness of Qsound shows that someone has figured out imaging. It is not public what is the algorithm, but nevertheless they can manipulate imaging with precision.
You are making the assumption that accuracy will result in best perceived imaging. The processing of something like Qsound among other things would indicate that is perhaps not the case.
QSound is a recording technique, but we are concerned solely with playback. Sure, you can do whatever you like with DSP and turn a mono recording into pseudo-stereo if you want, but if you want to sell it to other people, you have to assume that they are going to play it back sans DSP manipulation. Straightforward accuracy in this
will ensure the best imaging of what is in the recording.
We, as listeners, could have a special hobby where we took existing recordings and 're-mixed' them to our own taste - but of course without access to the original multitrack tapes (and possibly not even then, depending how they have been created) we would only have crude control of the sound. Some people even like to press the 'hall effect' button on their home theatre amplifier or car stereo now and again, apparently - I've never quite understood what this is for, myself.
But this is a distraction. We are still at the point of not being able to say that people don't lose (some) of their audio discerning abilities when they know they are taking part in an experiment. As long as this is true, audiophiles will never believe what your tests show (and, possibly, nor should they). The consensus seems to be that it is "highly unlikely" that we lose our listening abilities, but without any attempt to demonstrate whether it is true or not we cannot know.
And after a hundred years of listening tests (or whatever), we are at the stage where audio systems are still slowly progressing towards being 'straight' i.e. linear in all respects. This could have been worked out on day one (and probably was), with only a technology shortfall preventing it. We didn't need listening tests at all, in other words.